I've got a couple of different projects that I'd like to post up as open source. I've been trying to decide which of the three big open-source project hosting sites makes the most sense, or if I should just host it myself.
Are there any inherent drawbacks or benefits to these three? Is there a "best" place to host a project? Do different sites make more sense for different kinds of projects?
It's really a matter of personal taste. Google Code has a cleaner, simpler interface. Some also like the simplicity of creating projects, the ability to choose between Subversion and Mercurial, and also the Trac-like SCM-integrated wiki-style pages.
The only real criteria other than personal taste are: repository type and licensing. Sourceforge provides Subversion, Mercurial, Bazaar, Git and CVS. Google Code provides Git, Mercurial and Subversion. GitHub and Gitorious provide Git. I've never looked at CodePlex, so I don't know what they offer. Sourceforge hosts projects from a very wide range of open source licenses... it's actually quite daunting choosing a license from their list.
Google Code supports half a dozen licenses: Artistic/GPL, Apache, Eclipse, Gnu GPL, Gnu LGPL, MIT, Mozilla, New BSD. You can see them in the drop down of a new project: http://code.google.com/hosting/createProject
Don't forget github!
Wikipedia might be of help: Comparison of open source software hosting facilities
I think there are two angles to look at this, what development features each site offers, and what audience does each site reach.
From a development perspective, if you are interested in DVCS (Git or Mercurial) then CodePlex, GitHub, or Bitbucket are your best options. Google Code and SourceForge support DVCS as well, but their support for DVCS is not great. If you want Subversion, then Google Code is really the best Subversion host although SourceForge is reasonable, and CodePlex offers support for Subversion clients as well. Other core features (e.g bug tracking, forums/mailing lists, wiki, etc) are offered by all three but have some differences so perhaps more personal preference there.
From a site audience perspective there are big differences between the sites that can be important to your project. For example, if your project runs on Windows or other Microsoft technology, then CodePlex has a much higher concentration of Windows users so you are going to get higher downloads. For similar reasons, if you would like other developers to contribute to your project, CodePlex has a much higher concentration of Microsoft developers so you are more likely to get contributors. If your software runs on Linux then Google Code or SourceForge have a much larger Linux user base so you'd get more downloads/contributors there. If your software runs on Mac, I'm not as sure but I think GitHub might actually have the edge there.
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